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Am I responsible for the taxes on my earnings? ^
You are responsible for paying any applicable taxes on your affiliate earnings. Broadjam does not withold any taxes from your earnings. Before Broadjam will send you a payment, you must print out and submit either a completed W-9 form (US merchants) or a completed W-8 BEN form (non-US merchants) to Broadjam. Please see Section 3.06 of the Broadjam Affiliates Agreement for more information about how to submit the form. It is your responsibility to follow your local tax laws.
Instructions for filing a W-9 form can be found at: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw9.pdf.
Instructions for filing a W-8 form can be found at: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw8ben.pdf.
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How much can I sell my songs for? ^
You can sell your songs for $.99 a song. This price was chosen based on survey results we got from a random sample of our members.
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Where can people buy my music? ^
People will be able to buy your music wherever it appears on Broadjam because it will always have a “Buy” button next to it. It will always be available on your Artist Profile for you to direct your fans to. Your songs may also appear on one of the Broadjam Top Ten charts or on the Broadjam home page if your music receives excellent reviews in the review mechanism, or it may appear in the Search page as the result of a search. Contest winners, selected Pro Reviewer entrants, and other notable artists will also have the songs featured for sale on various places throughout Broadjam.com. In summary, wherever someone sees your song, they will be able to buy it.
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If I have a website hosted through someone else can I link to Broadjam to sell my music? ^
Yes, you can link them to your Artist Profile and from there they can purchase your songs. However, Broadjam Hosting was designed to make purchasing your downloads a fast and easy process. Set up a website with Broadjam and you can put “Buy” buttons directly on your website that will immediately take your customers to a shopping cart. The easier it is for the customer, the more likely you will be able to sell music. Consider Broadjam’s Web Hosting as an alternative for your current hosting company. Learn more about setting up a website in the Broadjam Hosting section.
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Are you going to allow fans to only hear 30 second clips before they buy? ^
Your song will not have a limited preview function. On Broadjam, fans can always listen to the entire song. By paying for downloads, fans will get the convenience of listening to your music wherever they want, instead of only when they are near a computer with an Internet connection.
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Can I allow people to download certain songs for free, and have them pay for others? ^
Yes, with Broadjam Free Songs you can mark your songs for free download. Just click the “not free” link to the right of the song title on your “Add/Edit My Songs” page. Songs need to be at least 192kbps in order to be made available for download.
Remember as a Primo MoB or Mini MoB member you do have the ability to use the Transmit function located in your profile area. This allows you to send a web link to the recipient of your choice. The recipient can then download and/or stream the songs that you choose to send to them. This is a way for you to give away more than one free download, while still selling your songs at the same price as other artists, to people who are shopping in the Broadjam Download Store. You are in complete control of who receives your songs when using the Transmit function.
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Will my sales be reported to Soundscan? ^
No, we do not currently report to Soundscan.
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You will be paid by check in U.S. dollars, which we will mail to you upon your request. You can request a payment once per quarter, provided that you have earned $20 or more from your sales. We will mail you the payment within thirty (30) days of the end of the quarter in which you request it.
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Why can I only get paid per quarter? ^
We send out checks once per quarter because we want to pay you as much as possible for each sale. Mailing out checks frequently throughout the quarter would be inefficient and expensive. The only way we could cover the cost would be to pay the artists less, which we don’t want to do.
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Why do I need $20 or more in my account to request a check for my profits? ^
We ask that you have $20 or more for the same reason we pay out once per quarter, to make sure we’re giving you the highest payout. It would be inefficient to send out checks for small amounts, and we’d have to reduce your payout to cover the costs.
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How much money will I make? ^
That depends on how much you promote your music, and how many people you tell where they can find it. You will receive $.80 for every $.99 download you sell. You should be the one to make money from your sales. Our cut of your download revenue, just under 20%, is designed to cover our transaction expenses (i.e. credit card fees, gateway fees, and merchant account fees). To help lower these expenses, we have started Broadjam’s Download Purchase Credit System. We use Download Purchase Credits to make sure artists receive the largest possible share of their download revenues.
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How do I see the number of times a song has been purchased for download? ^
First login to your account. Place your cursor over “Account Settings” in the navigation menu and click on “My Sales.” There you will see the date of each sale, how much money you have made, and the number of times your songs have been downloaded.
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How will I be paid if I’m not from the U.S.? ^
All payouts will be sent by check with amounts paid in USD. The artist is responsible for any necessary currency conversion.
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Can I donate my earnings directly to a charity organization? ^
We love the idea, and we encourage you to donate your earnings to charity. Because of accounting complexities, there is no automated function to do so on Broadjam, but we hope that doesn’t stop anyone from doing so themselves.
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Can I have my earnings deposited directly into my checking account? Or a Paypal account? ^
We do not currently have a direct deposit system with PayPal or any other provider. All payments are currently made by check.
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What is 192 Kbps format? ^
Only songs formatted at 192 Kbps bitrate (or higher) can be sold on Broadjam. 192 Kbps is a measure of your song’s audio quality. You can put your song into the 192 Kbps format when you convert it to MP3. Uploading new songs and re-uploading old songs in the 192 Kbps format into your Artist Profile will enable you sell music on Broadjam, while providing enhanced sound quality for people who listen to music on the website. We ask that you only sell songs that are in the 192 Kbps format because this format offers a high level of quality that is becoming popular with music buyers. You can upload your songs in 192 Kbps the same way you always have in your Artist Profile. Just take the original recording and convert it to MP3, formatting it with your audio software the same way you would always would, except this time select a bitrate of 192 Kbps instead of 128 Kbps. Then, go to the Songs edit page in your Artist Profile and upload as usual.
We recommend you always upload 192 CBR (Constant Bit Rate) files. Please don’t send VBR (Variable Bit Rate Files), since they will not be recognized by our systems. We will convert your files to Variable Bit Rate after we receive them. You can upload files encoded higher than 192 Kbps (i.e. 320 Kbps) if it is easier for you. If you have any problems, feel free to contact Broadjam Customer Service.
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Why can’t I sell my 128 kbps song files? ^
Your songs have to be encoded at 192 kbps because the 192 Kbps (or higher) format provides significantly higher quality than the 128 Kbps format, which gives the listener a superior experience with your music.
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I already have several songs encoded at 128 Kbps, can you just convert those for me? ^
Unfortunately, converting from lower quality files (128 Kbps) to higher quality files (192 Kbps) is not possible on your Broadjam profile. It can be compared to turning a gallon of water into two gallons of water. There’s not enough information in 128 Kbps MP3 file to make it 192 Kbps MP3 file.
However, you’re welcome to do this on your own before you upload the song to your profile. There are several software programs that can do this, including iTunes and Windows Media Player.
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What kind of security is in place to ensure the protection of my music? ^
We have made it as difficult as possible for people to steal your music, while still offering your fans the flexibility of buying MP3’s. We play your music through our own secure Flash player, so they can’t use their own player to capture your music. There is nowhere on the website for someone to simply download your music without paying for it first (except if you marked a song for Broadjam Free Songs). Unfortunately, the Internet is an insecure medium, so there will always be ways for the most savvy users to copy your music. We feel the majority of our users don’t behave that way, however.
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I no longer want to sell my songs. How can I remove the buy button? ^
First, login to your account. Place your cursor over “Account Settings” in the navigation menu and click on “My Sales.” Click the “Remove Songs” button and unselect the songs you’d like to remove.
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I’ve tried to mark my song for sale, but the buy button will not appear. Why? ^
If you’ve removed the song from the download store previously, you’ll need to contact Broadjam to have the song added to the download store. If the song hasn’t been removed previously, please contact Broadjam Customer Service.
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What are Broadjam free songs? ^
We allow our members to make as many songs as they’d like available for free download. It’s a great way for artists to attract new fans.
Songs need to be at least 192kbps in order to be made available for download. To make your song available for free download, login to your account, hover over “Songs” in the left menu and select “Add/Edit My Songs.” Then click the “not free” link to the right of the song title, which will change it to “free.”
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How do I make a song available for free? ^
Songs need to be at least 192kbps in order to be made available for download. To make your song available for free download, login to your account, hover over “Songs” in the left menu and select “Add/Edit My Songs.” Then click the “not free” link to the right of the song title, which will change it to “free.”
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How and where do I upload music to the Broadjam web site? ^
Once logged into your Broadjam account, place your cursor over the “Songs” item in the navigation menu and select the “Add/Edit Songs” option. Then click “Add New Song” to start the process of adding music to your profile.
On the song metadata page, enter the all of the information about the song that you’d like. The top three fields are required (name, length and genre), but the rest are not. Once your information is entered, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Submit” button. On the following page, you’ll just need to browse your computer files and specify the MP3 file you’d like to upload. Click the “Submit” button once the file is selected.
Once you see the “success” message, your song will have been added to the encoding queue. Until the song is encoded, the status of the song will read “pending.” Once the encoding has been completed, the song will be activated and ready for use. The encoding time will depend on how many other songs are being encoded, but it generally takes up to 20 or 30 minutes. If it takes longer than a day, you may want to try re-uploading the song or contacting customer support.
